Blade Runner Is A Masterclass In Turning A Movie Into A Video Game
In the late '90s, the creator of Command & Conquer made a very different kind of game. Westwood Studios had made a name for itself as a master of the real-time strategy genre, but Blade Runner—based on Ridley Scott's influential 1982 film—was a slow-burning detective story that had more in common with point-and-click adventures. The studio won a bidding war for the rights to make the game, beating Activision and EA to the punch, and the result is a peerless example of translating the vibe of a movie into a video game.
Blade Runner launched exclusively on PC in the winter of 1997, and beautifully replicates the visuals, ambience, production design, and distinctive sonic landscape of Scott's rain-soaked tour de force. When I play it, I feel like I've been transported to the movie's evocative near-future Los Angeles. Alien: Isolation (also heavily based on a Ridley Scott film, funnily enough) is the only other game I can think of that equals it in terms of masterfully capturing not only the aesthetic, but the essence, of its legendary source material.
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In the game you play as Ray McCoy, an android-hunting Blade Runner on the LAPD payroll who is the complete opposite of Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard. Deckard was a weary, washed-up veteran forced out of retirement against his will. McCoy, on the other hand, is a fresh-faced rookie with an eagerness and enthusiasm the movie's hero never had. They both wear stylish trench coats, wield blasters, and live in dimly lit apartments, but otherwise they're completely different people. McCoy actually seems to enjoy his job.
The game opens with one of the most severe crimes in Blade Runner's bleak vision of the
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